The shocking rates of infant mortality and cancer in Iraqi city raise new questions about battle

By Patrick Cockburn

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Children in Fallujah who suffer from birth defects which are thought to be linked to weapons used in attacks on the city by US Marines

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Blackwater CEO Eric Prince speaks about the US expanding cost to cover the war in Afghanistan, and the overall military spending. He is trying to sell of the company now known as "XE" which was changed after several human righs violation and moral violations that were made known in the press.  The first event was in 2007 in the infamous Nousser Square, where blackwater employees killed 17 unarmed civilians, unprovoked.  Another incident recently was when the new company XE hired a prostitute to work as a moral booster, which was paid by American tax payers. Historically this connects to what the Japanese government did during WW2, where it kidnapped Korean, Dutch, and other national women and forced them into sex slavery to boost moral for the soldiers fighting.  These private military contract companies are being used to fight for the United States, but they are not even American companies.  In 2008 XE transfered its national offices off of American soil, and many of its employees are from South America.  

Then the questioning starts about Afghanistan`s rich mineral reserves.  Obviously the United States and allies see this as a potential financial gain, to help pay for the expensive occupation.  The mineral deposits in Afghanistan have been known about for decades, but to use this countries own mineral reserves to pay for its own demise is in-human and sick.  This cannot be tolerated.     

President Obama called last month for a “new generation” of nuclear power plants and approved $8.3 billion in loan guarantees last week for two new reactors in Georgia, which would be the first such nuclear construction in three decades.

Actor Alec Baldwin, star of NBC’s comedy show
CAPTION
By Robyn Beck, AFP/Getty Images
Baldwin doesn’t mention Obama, but in a commentary today on The Huffington Post, he recounts safety problems at various nuclear power plants. He says he’s studied them since 1996 with the Radiation and Public Health Project, which he continues to support. He writes:

We gathered information about Indian Point, and worried about implications of a containment breach there long before 9/11 heightened that risk. We gathered information about Oak Ridge, Tennessee, The Gaseous Diffusion plant in Piketon, Ohio. The problems with operations at Dresden, Illinois. At Turkey Point in Florida. And we immersed ourselves in the problems surrounding the Oyster Creek facility in Tom’s River, New Jersey.

I started going down to Oyster Creek in 1996. I returned there with a 60 Minutes camera crew a couple of years ago. I have a strong and abiding belief that true knowledge of what does and does not go on in Tom’s River, as well as in both Trenton and Washington, combined with unbiased knowledge about nuclear power in utility reactors could kill any of the talk about reviving this industry.

This is an easy reminder that too many people are dying.   As a fellow veteran has said, Peace is winning, War is losing.   I used to naively believe that peace could be achieved through war, but now I have realized that war is war, and you cannot achieve anything but war once you start one.   It is impossible to prevent a war by going to war, because you just started one!

By: Bill D.  Vietnam Veteran

The New York Times Magazine recently had a long article about General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.  The article examined the general’s counterinsurgency plan for “success”.  The Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer recently claimed that General McChrystal is the world’s foremost counterterrorism expert because in his previous job in Iraq “he killed thousands of bad guys.”  (How many “bad guys” do they have in Iraq?)

A picture in the Times article showed that the general has Ranger and Special Forces patches on his sleeve.  These are very select units.  It means he is also airborne qualified.  General McChrystal also runs every day and is, according to one report, “a fitness nut”. He is strong and brave.  These may be qualities that are important to him, and that’s fine.  But for our country, the more important questions are:  is he compassionate and is he wise.?  Because strength and bravery without compassion and wisdom are worse than useless, they are destructive.  Is General McChrystal a destructive man?  I believe so.

If you read the N.Y.Times article carefully and critically, what comes across most strongly is that the general wants to win.  But what does he want to win?  He says he wants to win the military struggle by protecting the civilian population from the Taliban, by building up the Afghan Army and Police so that they can take over from our soldiers, and by convincing Taliban fighters to come over to the government side.  This is a formula for failure.

General McChrystal has been given the power of life and death over millions of Afghans.  Is he wise enough to use that power?  The answer appears to be “No.”  Does he know what the Afghan people want or need?  Has he asked?  Or is he just another in a long line of Americans whose chief export is arrogance?

The main U.S. goal is said to be getting the population on our side.  We have spent eight years not following through on this often stated goal.  General McChrystal is not following through on it yet, and his request for 40,000- 85,000 more troops shows that winning over the people is just a sound bite for him.  The plan offers nothing to the Afghan people except more fighting and dying.  Some Afghans will be protected while others will be left exposed.  General McChrystal wants to build up the Afghan security forces.  That will only put the people under the control of a corrupt force working for one of the most corrupt and brutal governments in the world.  The criminals, warlords and drug-runners surrounding President Hamid Karzai are, according to Ann Jones in a recent article, as cruel and anti-woman as the Taliban, but they are less disciplined in their fanaticism.  U.S. analysts and military commanders love to talk about “stabilizing” the country, but what are they planning on stabilizing:  misogyny, injustice,  hunger, homelessness, and early death?

What have we done for the Afghan people over the last eight years?  They are suffering from extremes of homelessness, the lack of basic necessities of life, and violence  We have spent over $200 billion, 90% of which has been for military spending.  Most of the 10% that is supposed to be for aid and reconstruction has been misspent or stolen.  We have supported Hamid Karzai, a man who has as much legitimacy as Diem did in South Vietnam.  The fighting itself creates wounded and dying people, but are we providing for those who are suffering?  It seems that if our generals and Congressional representatives understood or cared at all about what they are doing in Afghanistan, the ratio of military to civilian spending would be reversed and the spending for civilians would be increased until civilians were cared for, no matter what the cost.  What kind of a lying policy is  it when you claim to be protecting people and then you leave them to die from wounds, starvation, and sickness?

Our current debate doesn’t include the fact that the Afghans were credited with doing the fighting in the 1980’s that brought down the Soviet Union.  What kind of heartless government supplies the weapons and money for a fight like that and then walks away and leaves several million amputees and disabled people, including children, to fend for  themselves in a ruined country?  Our government has been bleeding Afghanistan for 30 years now and General McChrystal offers more bleeding.

There is one thing that should be the deciding question here and that is that, just as with the war in Iraq, George Bush started this war under false pretences.  The stated goal in the beginning was to find Osama bin Laden and destroy his ability to launch more attacks.  Bush demanded that the Taliban turn over bin Laden.  When they refused, Bush started bombing Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001.  On the weekend of Oct. 13-14, the Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden to a neutral third country for trial.  Bush said  “No.  There’s no negotiations.”  The corporate media, like the stinking jackals and corrupt parasites that they are, [Is this language too strong?  I'm a reasonable guy.  I can tone it down if I must] helped to make Bush look like a strong leader who refuses to negotiate with terrorists.  They helped to cover up the reality that Bush had just turned down an offer that could have ended the war almost at it’s start.  He didn’t want to end the war, he wanted to keep it going.

We joined the walk until it rested at the state capital.  There, Ash introduced himself as another veteran peacewalk and celebration ensued.  We had a lovely talk and shared peacewalk, peacemaking stories over lunch.

This was another great opportunity to share our ideas about next summer’s peacewalk.  Definite dates have not yet been set but tentatively we will begin mid to late June and travel from NYC to Washington DC.  As we left Olympia and traveled eastward to Wisconsin, we were continually placed with people in our path with interest and skills in being involved in the peacewalk.  Veterans, especially, are encouraged to come and partake in this literal movement for peace.

As plans continue to develop, we will post them here.  See you in June!